Making Misinformation Mandatory

in a world without risk and free of disagreement

The focus for this article is risky people and what to do about them. You know who I am talking about. You've heard of them. You know some of them. You may even be one of them. What do you do with risk? You remove it.

In Australia, some very well paid and very smart people have been paid to erect much needed barriers to conversation, debate and understanding. While their efforts have been remarkably successful, they have not been formalised and thus have not promoted the purity of thought that our government desires. This will soon change.

Sociologists, psychologists, media spivs, linguistic analysts and other mind control experts employed, funded and aligned with the Australian Government have done some excellent work in protecting us from risky misinformation.

Fortunately, many people are protected from risk by their own lack of curiosity and political allegiances. This is true of two local Councillors that I met with recently; one Green and one Labor.

They knew nothing of the New South Wales (NSW) state government’s advancing plans to impose disaster adaptation policies across much of the state. This planning involves potential loss of your home and relocation, at worst, and an expensive, rolling refit of your home, at best, at personal expense (a detailed study of this initiative can be found in one of Kate Mason’s recent works).

Recently, an open public process calling for submissions avoided their scrutiny. In the near future, these Councillors will be called on to deliberate on lifechanging plans affecting their neighbours and other residents. Their ignorance and inaction is essential to the success of current planning.

I met with these Councillors during the recent local Council elections where I handed out How-to-Vote leaflets for yet another in a long line of failed candidates unfortunate enough to have me on their team.

One way to break the tedium of these long days of campaigning is to talk to people handing out for the opposition. So I engaged a couple of Green and Labor touts. My first conversation was with a Greens supporter. I thought he might like to know about the Federal Government’s plans to strangle free speech.

His reply:

”'I’m not interested in that stuff”.

Later in the day I had a conversation with a Labor supporter. I explained to her that in an earlier life I would have been on her side but the Covid-19 injection mess turned me around.

Her reply:

”I am fully vaccinated. I don’t want to talk about it”.

People like this are not risky. They avoid it. Good for them. I congratulate them. They have not only shut out risk, misinformation and disinformation but most importantly curiosity.

This will guarantee their continued acceptance in polite, risk averse, incurious company.

Such people are much loved by our government. Expansive mandated medical experiments, newly invented genders, creative climate predictions pass unfiltered through their private fact-checkers without perturbation.

While these people present no risk, it is vitally important that they believe other people – maybe even you – do. How many of them are there? Where I live in the Blue Mountains, 12 Councillors were elected last weekend. 9 of them are Labor and 2 Green. So, apparently I am not only surrounded by natural bushland.

I live in a queer place

This preponderance of Trotskyian tree-huggers was facilitated by a conservative party that mucked up the complex process of submitting forms needed to contest the election. It also explains a 25% informal vote. I might add that we will now see the continuation of a local Queer program. Such programs are excellent examples of Trotsky's Permanent Revolution.

“As a queer and neurodivergent young woman, I understand the value of these programs first-hand. If re-elected, I am committed to continuing this vital work, and making sure our city is safe and welcoming for all residents."
Councillor Claire West, Blue Mountains Gazette, 12th August 2024

What is Queer? I think it is important that any misinformation / disinformation policy ensures that its terms are clearly defined so that people are not unfairly vilified. So let’s start with Queer. This describes the elimination of categories. No more male / female. No more adult / child.  It is an entity without an essence. In public debate, the meaning of Queer is intentionally opaque. 

Removing Risk

Let's turn to risk What is it? It is something that must be eliminated. How?

In the UK, Keir Starmer had an amateurish go at this but our Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, and Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland, seem determined to show how experts eviscerate public debate. Let me introduce you to their work.

This legislation is presented by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Please note that acronym. You are going to see a lot of it.

What our government plans to do is to insert Schedule 9 (digital communications platforms) from the above document at the very end of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. They’d like to do this without you making too much of a fuss which is why you may not have heard of it.

Firstly, this is not easy reading so I suggest you open the document in another tab as we go through it.

What follows is my review of this bill uninformed by formal legal training. Still, I hope it helps some people to understand the dangers this legislation presents should it be passed.

The core of this legislation is found in its clauses.

PART 1 DIVISION 1
PRELIMINARY CLAUSES 1 to 3

Clause 1 contains an initial outline:

”Some digital communications platform providers are subject to requirements in connection with misinformation and disinformation on digital communications platforms”.

These digital communication platform providers must comply with rules relating to:

(a) risk management;
(b) media literacy plans;
(c) complaints and dispute handling.

Next, you’ll want to go to Clause 2 - DEFINITIONS on page 4 to find out what a “digital communications platform provider” is. You will then be sent to subclause 7(1) where you will learn:

”7. Meaning of digital communications platform provider
(1) For the purposes of this Schedule, a digital communications platform provider is a person who provides a digital communications platform”.

Then you will want to do the same thing for “digital communications platform” which will send you to subclause 5(1) and so continue this iterative process until you figure you have enough of the terms under control to get a grasp of what is going on.

Enough of that. I won’t torture you any further. Here is a summary Clause by Clause of what we are looking at.

PART 1 DIVISION 2 CLAUSES 4 to 10

This section discusses Key Concepts and further interpretations around definitions such as what is an Interactive Feature and the extended meaning of USING.

PART 2 - MISINFORMATION and DISINFORMATION
DIVISION 1 - INTRODUCTION

This is where the real action starts on page 12 with the objects of the legislation:

CLAUSE 11 - OBJECTS

Object 11(a)
to enable end-users to better understand the accuracy and credibility of content disseminated using digital communications platforms, particularly content that purports to be factual or authoritative;

So our government is going to help us to understand what is accurate and credible and ensure digital communications platforms play their part. The Government has history with this when it dobbed people in to Facebook for challenging Zuckerberg's Big Pharma friendly censorship policy.  Strangely, his desire to have the world join this experiment aligned with the government’s own desire to have us injected with “god knows what”.  What a happy coincidence. 

OBJECTS 11(b)
Wants providers to publish details of how they plan to achieve 11(a) and to enhance “transparency” in its handling of mis / disinformation.

OBJECTS 11(c-f)
Promote the idea of an industry code to which platform providers will be expected to conform and that ACMA will then approve (11c and 11d).

This will provide ACMA with powers to support “freedom of expression” even while they are closing it down.  

These are also to support ACMA’s examination of “systemic issues”. This calls for a much expanded definition of vague.

CLAUSE 12 - Exemptions
Explains our emails, services without an interactive component and any service the government selects will be excluded from this legislation for now.

CLAUSE 13 - Meanings of misinformation and disinformation
This is content provided on a digital service to:

• one or more end-users in Australia;

• likely to cause HARM;

• NOT exempted from dissemination;

• reasonably verifiable as false.

So the people who did their best to make sure we were ignorant of the dangers of the mRNA / AZ injections, who are desperate that no reasonable debate takes place with regard to climate fluctuations and want the definition of woman redefined will now decide what is harmful and verifiably true or false. 

In determining this, other factors such as:

• circumstances;

• subject matter;

• reach;

• speed of dissemination;

• author;

• purpose;

• source attribution;

• other related information disseminated that is reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive;

• any other relevant matter.

Any of these factors may contribute to your silencing.


CLAUSE 14 - Meaning of Serious Harm:
”[H]arm to the operation or INTEGRITY of a Commonwealth, State, Territory or local government electoral or referendum process” or “harm to public health in Australia, including to the efficacy of preventative health measures in Australia”.

In 2024, this would seem to be an immense achievement. How this government's integrity might be compromised presents a real challenge. And the "harm to public health" is surely laughable. Elsewhere in the document it refers to exemptions for satire and parody. Surely, that is what is operating here. 

This clause continues with an extensive list of people who must not be vilified but offers no definition. This is sure to be found in another piece of thoughtful legislation. Unknowingly, I may have already cross the vilification line in this article a couple of times. The good news is that the vilified will soon see that the government puts an end to my carelessness.

This harm can take various forms:

• physical harm through our online platform activity (I have no idea. You tell me)

• to infrastructure,

• to emergency services,

• to the Australia economy

• that has far-reaching consequences for the Australian community (or a bit of it)

• has severe consequences for an individual in Australia.

CLAUSE 15 - Inauthentic behaviour
Dissemination of information that is misleading or where there are grounds to suspect the dissemination is part of coordinated action.

Our local Mayor has been featured recently on national radio pointing to coordinated action where there is none. This would need to be carefully administered OR NOT. 

This Clause also points to questions around IDENTITY which seem to complement calls for a Digital Id and lack of anonymity in the use of online services.

CLAUSE 16 - Meaning of excluded dissemination
“(1) For the purposes of this Schedule, the following are excluded dissemination:
(a) dissemination of content that would reasonably be regarded as parody or satire”;

When done well both parody and satire contain more than a hint of truth easily mischaracterised as misinformation / disinformation.  Assessing such content is more art than science and calls for a sense of humour. Despite much of the content of this Misinformation Bill, there is little to indicate that its key contributors are trying to be funny or that they will be generous in their assessment of what is. 

Professional news content is to be exempted under this clause. One can only assume that this is due the fact, as during Covid scam, most of our news was perfectly under the control of The Trusted News Initiative.

PART 2 - MISINFORMATION and DISINFORMATION
DIVISION 2 - TRANSPARENCY

CLAUSE 17 Digital communications platform provider must publish information

The provider must display their:

• rules relating to assessment (re of mis/disinformation)

• risks relating to design or functioning of the platform

• risks for end-users

• its mis / disinformation policy and policy approach

• a current media literacy program

• anything else

• anything that might increase mis / disinformation

• penalties apply for failure

• media literacy plan (see below Clause 22)

18 REMEDIAL DIRECTIONS—contravention of requirement to publish 24 information
Relates to contravention of the Act

CLAUSES 19 to 21
These allow ACMA to impose remedial action on platform providers relating to risk under civil penalty provisions.

CLAUSE 22 to 24 Media Literacy Plan
From DEFINITIONS:
”Media Literacy Plan - for a digital communications platform, means a plan setting out measures the digital communications platform provider of the platform will take to enable end-users to better identify misinformation and disinformation on the platform, including to enable end-users to identify the source of content disseminated on the platform (particularly content that purports to be authoritative or factual).

That’s right. We are looking at the “measures the digital communications platform provider of the platform will take to enable end-users to better identify misinformation and disinformation” as though this is transparent process. Nothing does more to show how ridiculous this entire process is.  

ACMA may require providers to update their media literacy plans (presumably in accord with government policy), state the tools being used and provide assessment of their effectiveness. Providers must stick to their plans and as usual, penalties apply for not doing so.

CLAUSE 25 - 27 COMPLAINTS
These clauses call for a complaints handling process in relation to misinformation, the need to conform to the Media Literacy Plan and penalties for not conforming.

The many ways that a complaints process might be abused under this bill is only limited by the enemies of free speech's imagination.

CLAUSES 28-29
Review for relevance

CLAUSE 30 - 32 Information
Relates to record keeping and reporting by providers, their compliance and related penalties.

CLAUSE 33 - 34 Information Gathering
This relates to ACMA’s power to commandeer records from providers OR from other persons.

34(1) This clause applies to a person if:

(a) the ACMA has reasonable grounds to believe that the person has information or a document (other than source code) that is relevant to any of the following matters:
(i) misinformation or disinformation on a digital communications platform;

This seems to give ACMA extraordinary powers to access personal files

Also see subclauses 34(3-5).

CLAUSES 34-7 - Copying of Documents
Relate to copying, compensation and retention of documents.

CLAUSE 38 - Publication on ACMA website
This discusses publishing information related to mis/disinformation that is very broad. Its implications are less than clear. Could people or providers be used as bad examples?

CLAUSES 39 - 40 Protected Information (See DEFINITIONS)
If ACMA is satisfied that information is protected, it will not be published as discussed in Clause 38. Will anything we own be protected.

CLAUSE 41
Discusses a wide range of circumstances and people with whom Protected Information may be shared under Part 7a of Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005

CLAUSE 42-3
Discusses “Sections” of the Digital Platform Industry

CLAUSE 44 - Examples of matters that may be dealt with by misinformation codes and misinformation standards
This is a list of activities that may require action as a result of the detection of mis/disinformation. While they are extensive, they mainly relate to the providers’ responsibilities.

CLAUSE 45-46
ACMA promises not to include VOIP or private messages in their net.

CLAUSES 47-53
Refers to a Code [of Behaviour/Conduct] that may be representative of an industry or section of an industry and ACMA’s right to inspect that Code. Clause 50 relates to allowable variations in the Code. Please give me your interpretation of it. Clauses 51-3 relate to revoking the code, compliance and remedial directions / contravention.

CLAUSE 54 - Limitation in relation to freedom of political communication
Relax people. Everything is OK because ACMA:

[M]ust not determine a standard under this Division that deals with one or more matters relating to the operation of digital communications platforms unless the ACMA is satisfied that the standard:
(a) is reasonably appropriate …..
(b) goes no further than reasonably necessary ….

There you go. Nothing to worry about.

CLAUSES 55-59 - Code Failure
Explains ACMA may determine changes to a code (see CLAUSE 48). Or where no appropriate industry body or association exists or where a code is perceived to have failed ACMA may intervene. It may also enforces standards in the event of partial failure of a code. It may also determine standards in the event of emerging circumstances.

Then any Code conceived had better match government expectations. Elon, are you listening?

CLAUSES 60-61
Will allow ACMA to vary a standard for a particular part of the industry or revoke standards. It seems no reason is needed.

CLAUSE 62 - 63 Compliance with misinformation standard
Enforces compliance with a standard and remedial actions for non-compliance.

CLAUSE 64 - ACMA to maintain Register of misinformation codes and misinformation standards
To keep a record of all codes, notices and requests made to industry bodies.

CLAUSES 65-66 - Misinformation standards prevail over inconsistent misinformation codes
Where a standard disagrees with an industry misinformation code, the standard takes precedence and digital platform rules prevail over standards and codes.

CLAUSE 67 Removing content and blocking end-users
Nothing is contained in the legislation that prevents providers from removing content for their own reasons.

CLAUSE 68 - Investigations and hearings—limitation on scope
This requires legal interpretation beyond my scope.

CLAUSE 69 - Annual reporting by ACMA
Commitment to report to the Australian Parliament.

CLAUSE 70 - Review of operation of this Part [2]
Within 3 years

CLAUSE 71 - Relationship with other laws
”This Part, digital platform rules made for the purposes of this Part, approved misinformation codes and misinformation standards do not limit the operation of any of the following”:

(a) Schedule 8 to this Act; 28
(b) the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918; 29
(c) the Competition and Consumer Act 2010; 30
(d) the Criminal Code;
(e) Parts 4 and 9 of the Online Safety Act 2021;

An investigation of these relationships is well beyond the scope of this document but is included for completeness.

CLAUSE 72-5 - Contraventions, Infringements, Warnings and Remedial Directions
Contains a list of subclauses related to civil penalties, infringement provision, warnings and remedial actions.

CLAUSES 77 - 79 Servicing of Notices, Summons and Acquisition of Property
We are assured that:

”The provisions of this Schedule have no effect to the extent (if any) to which their operation would result in an acquisition of property”.

CLAUSES 80-81- Schedule Acts Concurrently with State Laws and does not affect State functions

CLAUSE 82 - Digital platform rules
By this Act, ACMA can prescribe digital platform rules.

It may be of no consequence that this last clause turns up now. Yet, Clauses 65 and 66 explain that digital platform rules take precedence over standards and codes.  This places ACMA in an extraordinarily powerful position to dictate policy.

The Real Risk

At this stage, the Government’s focus appears to be the risk that your free speech presents to society. Why has the world become such a dangerous place? Were you saying dangerously risky things 5 years ago, 10 years ago?

What changed? In two days time, our Government representatives will be attending a major event in New York called “The Summit of the Future”. At that event, Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, is expected to sign “The Pact for the Future”. I wrote about this in my last article.

This will tie us into an international framework in order to fight 7 new risks. These risks are so dangerous that governments have only hinted at them. I guess they didn’t want to worry you.

These risks will require elaborate protocols for pre-emptive inter-governmental action. Driving these is official determination to address anthropogenic induced climate change. As with the Covid crisis, there is no room for debate.

This “Combatting Misinformation / Disinformation” bill will make sure of it.